Congratulations, it's a maltipoo!

This post is a day late, but we have a dog to take to doggie events again! After being nameless for a day, she has finally got one we could both agree to: Tasha. Tasha is a cross-breed, fashionably referred to as a maltipoo (no prizes for guessing her parentage).

And so now with a new puppy in the house, we'll all be making a lot of adjustments while we adapt to a new personality in residence. For the moment, the cats are unhappy with this new addition and have gone off their food.

And for us, Tasha is no Q-tip replacement. Where Q-tip tended towards placidity, Tasha is a ball of energy and is quite demanding of attention. For a small pup, she has a sharp, high-pitched bark that can be quite startling. And the process of housetraining has to begin all over again.

Fortunately, this week begins Spring Break, so I can afford to spend a little more time at home to get this little fella acclimatized to our family, and us to her.

Raw or rawr!

Tried a sampling of Sunday Pets New Zealand freeze-dried beef and blueberry. I thought this combination might work and I would finally have grateful smitten felines circling my ankles every time I brought out the snack-pack...

Sadly, this was not the case.

Maui took a sniff, a lick, and when threatened with having to eat it for real, ran for the hills. Kaiser (above) only saw fit to bat it once across the floor with a deft paw. Clearly the boys are not impressed.

Only Momo will eat it, and even then, it seems she has reached maximum marginal utility with the freeze-dried stuff. She munched through this last piece (above) looking totally bored.

Fusspots!

Edit 01:

The cats continue to confuse me. At breakfast, I decided to get rid of the remaining sample by evenly distributing it all in their individual bowls. Before the other two cats got there, Maui wiped them all out. I've never put much stock in the fickleness of feline dietary preferences, but if this experiment has proven anything, it's that my cats are mad.

More adventures in the raw

Feeding the cats with the Ziwi Peak raw air-dried venison and fish. As usual, the boys will have nothing to do with it. One sniff and they're walking out of the kitchen already mentally composing a letter of complaint to the management.

And again, only Momo is willing to put her face in it and nom away.

Managed to convince Kaiser to try some of the stuff by adding a level spoonful of his regular kibble. Even so, he's no big fan going by his leftovers.

For dessert, Sunday Pets freeze-dried Manuka glazed lamb... but the cats have totally confused me. Yesterday, Kaiser couldn't get enough of the snack, today he absolutely refuses to touch it. Momo was the complete opposite: where yesterday she refused it outright, today she's eating it out of my hand.

So far, my experiments with raw pet food have been pretty inconclusive. If I'm going to plonk down actual money for a pack, it'll be a small pack just for Momo. The two boys can jolly well get a top-up of their current commercial crap, and like it.

Cats and raw snacks

No hard feelings. Ginger tom still recognizes us and begs us for food despite being wrongfully imprisoned in our cage for over 24 hours. Apparently, he's already been fixed, so the trip to the vet proved unnecessary -- apart from his ear tipping (which Elim says is very important).

Today we're visiting the ST classified ads sponsored pets event at ECP, reliving the good ol' days when we had a dog to bring to such an event. Maybe we will again soon... but that's left to be seen.

But that's how we wound up with a bunch of free sample Ziwi Peak air-dried (above) and Sunday Pets freeze-dried (below) raw food to try out on the cats at home.

This could get complicated. It's bath day for Momo (see her traumatized look above) and so we wanted to reward her with the Sunday Pets lamb snack (below). She sniffed it suspiciously; licked it once; took it into her mouth... and promptly spat it out again. Either she doesn't like it, or multi-tasking between lick-drying herself and snack-eating was conflicting with her taste processors. We'll try it again later.

Kaiser, on the other hand, went bananas over the lamb snack. The first two morsels he ate while perched on his favourite shelf. The third piece brought him to floor level where he chased me into the kitchen. Maui, as before, turned his nose up at the treat and let Kaiser have it. Above, Kaiser is polishing off Momo's refused piece.

So, each cat has it's own preferred raw food type. We have yet to find out what turns Maui on, but Kaiser goes for the cheaper lamb snack while hoity-toity Momo wants green-lipped mussels. How to remember all these specific little details? *headache